Room to Grow

The M2 Landscape Lounge, designed by Scott Wilson in collaboration with Belgium-based Quinze & Milan (www.quinzeandmilan.tv), is a flexible modular seating system for public environments. A monolithic version of the M2, the M2 Cross, was selected and customized by Rem Koolhaas, Mark Von Hof-Zogrotzki, and Joshua Ramus, of OMA, to meet certain ADA and budget requirements for their new Seattle Central Library. Here Wilson talks about his lounge system, which made its American debut at New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair earlier this year.

**

About two years ago I met OMA’s Joshua Ramus, who expressed the firm’s dissatisfaction with the public seating available on the market. I suggested a low table with soft-skinned foamed cushions on top, but their bid package was going out so there was no time. A month or two later I showed Arne Quinze, owner of Quinze & Milan, some of the sketches I’d done when I was in New York, which he liked. I later modeled everything on the computer and sent them to Quinze, who agreed to make it. It was a surprisingly simple effort.

This modular system is all based on a grid. Each piece sits on its own little square frame that interlocks with other pieces depending on how you want to expand it. There’s an L-shaped corner piece, a straight extruded piece, a flat ottoman piece, and a table unit.

It’s made from a proprietary self-skinning polyurethane foam finish, but it can also be upholstered.

The seam on the corner unit was a big challenge. There are two pieces of foam that have to be connected, and because there is no upholstery to hide anything, they have to be seamed together very carefully so there’s no apparent mismatch.

Four pieces put together will seat about ten people.

It’s called the M2 landscape lounge. M2 refers to a square meter, which is the actual size of the lounge piece. We started off calling it Frame and a couple of other names, just as functional project names, but after I came up with M2 it stuck.